| 31 | 31 |
27... ←
- 2. Said the Earth, “Lord of the Shining Face,* my House is empty.... Send thy Sons to people this Wheel.† Thou hast sent thy Seven Sons to the Lord of Wisdom (a). Seven times doth he see thee nearer to himself; seven times more doth he feel thee (b). Thou hast forbidden thy Servants, the small Rings, to catch thy Light and Heat, thy great Bounty to intercept on its passage. Send now to thy Servant the same!”
(a) The “Lord of Wisdom” is Mercury, or Budha.
(b) The modern Commentary explains the words as a reference to a well-known astronomical fact, that Mercury receives seven times more 28 ←light and heat from the Sun than the Earth, or even the beautiful Venus, which receives but twice the amount falling on our insignificant Globe. Whether the fact was known in antiquity may be inferred from the prayer of the “Earth Spirit” to the Sun as given in the text.‡ The Sun, however, refuses to people the Globe, as it is not ready to receive life as yet.
Mercury, as an astrological Planet, is still more Occult and mysterious than Venus. It is identical with the Mazdean Mithra, the Genius, or God, “established between the Sun and the Moon, the perpetual companion of the ‘Sun’ of Wisdom.” Pausanias (Bk. v.) shows him as having an altar in common with Jupiter. He had wings to express his attendance upon the Sun in its course; and he was called the Nuntius and Sun-wolf, “solaris luminis particeps.” He was the leader and evocator of Souls, the great Magician and the Hierophant. Virgil depicts him as taking his wand to evoke from Orcus the souls plunged therein—tum virgam capit, hac animas ille evocat Orco.§ He is the Golden-coloured Mercury, the Χρυσοφαὴς Ἑρμῆς whom the Hierophants forbade to name. He is symbolized in Grecian mythology by one of the “dogs” (vigilance), which watch over the celestial flock (Occult Wisdom), or Hermes Anubis, or again Agatho-
* The Sun.
† Earth.
‡ Copernicus wrote his theories on the “Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies” in the sixteenth century, and the Zohar, even if compiled by Moses de Leon in the thirteenth century, states that: “In the Book of Hammannunah, the Old (or, the Ancient), we learn ... that the earth turns upon itself in the form of a circle; that some are on top, the others below; that ... there are some countries of the earth which are lightened, whilst others are in darkness; these have the day, when for the former it is night; and there are countries in which it is constantly day, or in which at least the night continues only some instants.” (Zohar, iii, fol. 10a, quoted in Myer's Qabbalah, p. 139.)
§ See also the 21st Fargard of the Vendídád on the celestial militia.
| 32 | 32 |
dæmon. He is the Argus watching over the Earth, mistaken by the latter for the Sun itself. It is through the intercession of Mercury that the Emperor Julian prayed to the Occult Sun every night; for, as says Vossius:
All the theologians assert that Mercury and the Sun are one... He was the most eloquent and the most wise of all the Gods, which is not to be wondered at, since Mercury is in such close proximity to the Wisdom and the Word of God [the Sun] that he was confused with both.*
Vossius here utters a greater Occult truth than he suspected. The Hermes of the Greeks is closely related to the Hindû Saramâ and Sârameya, the divine watchman, “who watches over the golden flock of stars and solar rays.”
In the clearer words of the Commentary:
The Globe, propelled onward by the Spirit of the Earth and his six Assistants, 29 ←gets all its vital forces, life, and powers through the medium of the seven planetary Dhyânis from the Spirit of the Sun. They are his messengers of Light and Life.
Like each of the Seven Regions of the Earth, each of the seven† First-born [the primordial Human Groups] receives its light and life from its own especial Dhyâni—spiritually, and from the Palace [House, the Planet] of that Dhyâni—physically; so with the seven great Races to be born on it. The First is born under the Sun; the Second under Brihaspati [Jupiter]; the Third under Lohitânga [Mars, the “Fiery-bodied,” and also under Venus or Shukra]; the Fourth, under Soma [the Moon, our Globe also, the Fourth Sphere being born under and from the Moon] and Shani, Saturn,‡ the Krûra-lochana [Evil-eyed], and the Asita [the Dark]; the Fifth, under Budha [Mercury].
So also with man and every “man” [every principle] in man. Each gets its specific quality from its Primary [the Planetary Spirit], therefore every man is a septenate [or a combination of principles, each having its origin in a quality of that special Dhyâni]. Every active power or force
* Idolat., II. 373.
† Science teaches that Venus receives from the Sun twice as much light and heat as the Earth. Thus this Planet, precursor of the dawn and the twilight, the most radiant of all the Planets, is said to give the Earth one-third of the supply she receives, and has two parts left for herself. This has an Occult as well as an astronomical meaning.
‡ “As it is above, so below,” is the fundamental axiom of Occult Philosophy. As the Logos is seven-fold, i.e., throughout Kosmos it appears as seven Logoi under seven different forms, or, as taught by learned Brâhmans, “each of these is the central figure of one of the seven main branches of the ancient Wisdom Religion”; and, as the seven principles which correspond to the seven distinct states of Prajnâ, or Consciousness, are allied to seven states of Matter and seven forms of Force, the division must be the same in all that concerns the Earth.
| 33 | 33 |
of the Earth comes to her from one of the seven Lords. Light comes through Shukra [Venus], who receives a triple supply, and gives one-third of it to the Earth. Therefore the two are called “Twin-sisters,” but the Spirit of the Earth is subservient to the “Lord” of Shukra. Our wise men represent the two Globes, one over, the other under the double Sign [the primeval Svastika bereft of its four arms, or the cross, 
].*
The “double sign” is, as every student of Occultism knows, the symbol of the male and the female principles in Nature, of the positive and the negative, for the Svastika or 
is all that and much more. All antiquity, ever since the birth of Astronomy—imparted to the Fourth Race by one of the Kings of the Divine Dynasty—and 30 ←also of Astrology, represented Venus in its astronomical tables as a Globe poised over a Cross, and the Earth, as a Globe under a Cross. The Esoteric meaning of this is the Earth fallen into generation, or into the production of its species through sexual union. But the later Western nations have not failed to give it quite a different interpretation. They explained the sign through their Mystics—guided by the light of the Latin Church—as meaning that our Earth and all on it were redeemed by the Cross, while Venus—otherwise Lucifer or Satan—was trampling upon it. Venus is the most Occult, powerful, and mysterious of all the Planets; the one whose influence upon, and relation to, the Earth is most prominent. In exoteric Brâhmanism, Venus or Shukra—a male deity†—is the son of Bhrigu, one of the Prajâpati and a Vedic sage, and is Daitya-Guru, or the priest-instructor of the primeval giants. The whole history of Shukra in the Purânas, refers to the Third and Fourth Races. As says the Commentary:
It is through Shukra that the “double ones” [the hermaphrodites] of the Third ['Root-Race'] descended from the first “Sweat-born.” Therefore it is represented under the symbol [
] [the circle and diameter], during the Third [Race], and [
], during the Fourth.
This needs explanation. The diameter, when found isolated in a circle, stands for female Nature; for the first ideal World, self-generated and self-impregnated by the universally diffused Spirit of Life—thus also referring to the primitive Root-Race. It becomes androgynous as the Races and all else on Earth develop into their physical forms, and the symbol is transformed into a circle with a diameter from which runs a
* Venus is thus 
, the Earth 
.
† In the Esoteric Philosophy it is male and female, or hermaphrodite; hence the “bearded” Venus in mythology.
| 34 | 34 |
vertical line, expressive of male and female, not separated as yet—the first and earliest Egyptian Tau; after which it becomes , or male female separated* and fallen into generation. Venus (the Planet), is symbolized by the sign of a globe over a cross, which shows the former as presiding over the natural generation of man. The Egyptians symbolized Ankh, “life,” by the ansated cross, or 
, which is only another form of Venus (Isis), , and meant, Esoterically, that mankind and all animal life had stepped out of the divine spiritual circle and had fallen into physical male and female generation. This sign, from the end of the Third Race, has the same phallic significance as the “Tree 31 ←of Life” in Eden. Anouki, a form of Isis, is the Goddess of Life; and Ankh was taken by the Hebrews from the Egyptians. It was introduced into the language by Moses, one learned in the Wisdom of the priests of Egypt, with many other mystical words. The word Ankh in Hebrew, with the personal suffix, means “my life”—my being—which “is the personal pronoun Anochi,” from the name of the Egyptian Goddess Anouki.†
In one of the most ancient Catechisms of Southern India, Madras Presidency, the hermaphrodite Goddess Ardhanârî,‡ has the ansated cross, the Svastika, the “male and female sign,” right in the central part, to denote the pre-sexual state of the Third Race. Vishnu, who is now represented with a lotus growing out of his navel—or the Universe of Brahmâ evolving out of the central point, Nara—is shown in one of the oldest carvings as double-sexed (Vishnu and Lakshmî) standing on a lotus-leaf floating on the water, the water rising in a semicircle and pouring through the Svastika, “the source of generation,” or of the descent of man.
Pythagoras calls Shukra-Venus the Sol alter, the “other Sun.” Of the “seven Palaces of the Sun,” that of Lucifer-Venus is the third in Christian and Jewish Kabalah, the Zohar making of it the abode of Samael. According to the Occult Doctrine, this Planet is our Earth's primary, and its spiritual prototype. Hence, Shukra's car (Venus-Lucifer's) is said to be drawn by an Ogdoad of “earth-born horses,” while the steeds of the chariots of the other Planets are different.
* Therefore, putting aside its religio-metaphysical aspect, the Cross of the Christians is symbolically far more phallic than the Pagan Svastika. Compare vol. i. pp. 34, 35.
† The ansated cross is the astronomical planetary sign of Venus, “signifying the existence of parturient energy in the sexual sense, and this was one of the attributes of Isis, the Mother, of Eve, Hauvah, or Mother-Earth, and was so recognized among all the ancient peoples in one or another mode of expression.” (From a modern Kabalistic MS.)
‡ See Moore's Hindû Pantheon.
| 35 | 35 |
Every sin committed on Earth is felt by Ushanas-Shukra. The Guru of the Daityas is the Guardian Spirit of the Earth and Men. Every change on Shukra is felt on, and reflected by, the Earth.
Shukra, or Venus, is thus represented as the Preceptor of the Daityas, the giants of the Fourth Race, who, in the Hindû allegory, at one time obtained the sovereignty of all the Earth, and defeated the minor Gods. The Titans of the Western allegory also are as closely connected with Venus-Lucifer, which was identified by later Christians with Satan. And, as Venus, equally with Isis, was represented with cow's horns on her head, the symbol of mystic Nature—one convertible with, and significant of, the Moon, since all these were lunar Goddesses—the configuration of this Planet is now placed by theologians between the horns of the mystic Lucifer.* It is owing to the fanciful interpretation of the 32 ←archaic tradition, which states that Venus changes simultaneously (geologically) with the Earth, that whatever takes place on the one takes place on the other, and that many and great were their common changes—it is for these reasons that St. Augustine repeats it, applying the several changes of configuration, colour, and even of the orbital paths, to that theologically-woven character of Venus-Lucifer. He even goes so far in his pious fancy as to connect the last changes of the Planet with the Noachian and mythical Deluge alleged to have taken place 1796 b.c.†
As Venus has no satellites, it is stated allegorically, that Âsphujit
* Athenæus shows that the first letter of Satan's name was represented in days of old by an arc and crescent; and some Roman Catholics, kind, good men, would persuade the public that it is in honour of Lucifer's crescent-like horns that Mussulmans have chosen the crescent for their national arms. Venus, ever since the establishment of Roman Catholic dogmatism, has been identified with Satan and Lucifer, or the Great Dragon, contrary to all reason and logic. As shown by symbologists and Astronomers: “The association between the serpent and the idea of darkness had an astronomical foundation. The position which the constellation Draco at one time occupied showed that the Great Serpent was the ruler of the night. This constellation was formerly at the very centre of the heavens, and is so extensive that it was called the Great Dragon. Its body spreads over seven signs of the Zodiac; and Dupuis, who sees in the Dragon of the Apocalypse a reference to the celestial serpent, says, ‘It is not astonishing that a constellation so extended should be represented by the author of that book as a great dragon with seven heads, who drew the third part of the stars from heaven and cast them to the earth.’ ” (Staniland Wake, The Great Pyramid, p. 79; Dupuis, iii. 255.) Only Dupuis never knew why Draco, once the pole-star—the symbol of Guide, Guru and Director—had been thus degraded by posterity. “The Gods of our fathers are our devils,” says an Asiatic proverb. When Draco ceased to be the “lode-star,” the guiding sidereal divinity, it shared the fate of all the fallen Gods. Seth and Typhon was at one time, Bunsen tells us, “a great God universally adored throughout Egypt, who conferred on the sovereigns of the 18th and 19th Dynasties the symbols of life and power. But subsequently, in the course of the 20th Dynasty, he is suddenly treated as an evil Demon, insomuch that his effigies and name are obliterated on all the monuments and inscriptions that could be reached.” The real Occult reason will be given in these pages.
† De Civitate Dei, LXXI. viii.
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(this “Planet”) adopted the Earth, the progeny of the Moon, “who overgrew its parent and gave much trouble”—a reference to the Occult connection between the two. The Regent (of the Planet) Shukra* loved his adopted child so well that he incarnated as Ushanas and gave it perfect laws, which were disregarded and rejected in later ages. Another allegory, in the Harivansha, is that Shukra went to Shiva and asked him to protect his pupils, the Daityas and Asuras, from the fighting Gods; and that to further his object he performed a Yoga rite “imbibing the smoke of chaff with his head downwards for 1,000 years.” This refers to the great inclination of the axis of Venus—amounting to fifty degrees—and to its being enveloped in eternal clouds. But it relates only to the physical constitution of the Planet. It is with its Regent, the informing Dhyân Chohan, 33 ←that Occult Mysticism has to deal. The allegory which states that Vishnu was cursed by Shukra to be reborn seven times on the Earth as a punishment for killing his (Shukra's) mother, is full of Occult philosophical meaning. It does not refer to Vishnu's Avatâras, since these number nine—the tenth being still to come—but to the Races on Earth. Venus, or Lucifer—also Shukra and Ushanas—the Planet, is the light-bearer of our Earth, in both the physical and mystic sense. The Christians knew it well in early times, since one of the earliest popes of Rome is known by his pontiff-name as Lucifer.
Every world has its parent Star and sister Planet. Thus Earth is the adopted child and younger brother of Venus, but its inhabitants are of their own kind.... All sentient complete beings [full septenary men or higher beings] are furnished, in their beginnings, with forms and organisms in full harmony with the nature and state of the Sphere they inhabit.†
The Spheres of Being, or Centres of Life, which are isolated nuclei breeding their men and their animals, are numberless; not one has any resemblance to its sister-companion or to any other in its own special progeny.‡
* Shukra is the son of Bhrigu the great Rishi, and one of the Seven Prajâpati, the founder of the Race of Bhârgavas, in which Parashu Râma is born.
† This is a flat contradiction of Swedenborg, who saw, in “the first Earth of the Astral World,” inhabitants dressed as are the peasants in Europe; and on the Fourth Earth women clad as are the shepherdesses in a bal masqué! Even the famous astronomer Huygens laboured under the mistaken idea that other worlds and planets have species of beings identical with those who live on our Earth, possessing the same figures, senses, brain-power, arts, sciences, dwellings, even to the same fabric for their wearing apparel! (Théorie du Monde.)
‡ This is a modern gloss. It is added to the old Commentaries for the clearer comprehension of those disciples who study Esoteric Cosmogony after having passed through Western learning. The earlier Glosses are too redundant with adjectives and figures of speech to be easily assimilated.
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All have a double physical and spiritual nature.
The nucleoles are eternal and everlasting; the nuclei periodical and finite. The nucleoles form part of the Absolute. They are the embrasures of that black impenetrable fortress, which is for ever concealed from human or even Dhyânic sight. The nuclei are the light of eternity escaping therefrom.
It is that Light which condenses into the Forms of the “Lords of Being”—the first and the highest of which are, collectively, Jîvâtmâ, or Pratyagâtmâ [which is said figuratively to issue from Paramâtmâ. It is the Logos of the Greek philosophers—appearing at the beginning of every new Manvantara]. From these downwards—formed from the ever-consolidating waves of that Light, which becomes on the objective plane gross Matter—proceed the numerous Hierarchies of the Creative Forces; some formless, others having their 34 ←own distinctive form, others, again, the lowest [Elementals], having no form of their own, but assuming every form according to the surrounding conditions.
Thus there is but one Absolute Upâdhi [Basis] in the spiritual sense, from, on, and in which, are built for manvantaric purposes the countless basic centres on which proceed the universal, cyclic, and individual Evolutions during the active period.
The informing Intelligences, which animate these various Centres of Being, are referred to indiscriminately by men beyond the Great Range*as the Manus, the Rishis, the Pitris,† the Prajâpati, and so on; and as Dhyâni-Buddhas, the Chohans, Melhas [Fire-Gods], Bodhisattvas,‡ and others, on this side. The truly ignorant call them Gods; the learned profane, the One God; and the wise, the Initiates, honour in them only the manvantaric manifestations of That which neither our Creators [the Dhyân Chohans] nor their creatures can ever discuss or know anything about. The Absolute is not to be defined, and no mortal or immortal has ever seen or comprehended it during the periods of Existence. The mutable cannot know the Immutable, nor can that which lives perceive Absolute Life.
“Therefore, man cannot know higher Beings than his own Progenitors.”
* “Beyond” the Great Range, means, in this case, India, as being the Trans-Himâlayan region for the Tibetan region.
† The term Pitris is used by us in these Shlokas to facilitate their comprehension, but it is not so used in the original Stanzas, where they have distinct appellations of their own, besides being called “Fathers” and “Progenitors.”
‡ It is erroneous to take literally the worship of the human Bodhisattvas, or Manjushrî. It is true that, exoterically, the Mahâyâna school teaches adoration of these without distinction, and that Huien-Tsang speaks of some disciples of Buddha as being worshipped. But, Esoterically, it is not the disciple or the learned Manjushrî personally that received honours, but the divine Bodhisattvas and Dhyâni-Buddhas that animated (amilakha, as the Mongolians say) the human forms.
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“Nor shall he worship them,” but he ought to learn how he came into the world.
Number Seven, the fundamental figure among all other figures in every national religious system, from Cosmogony down to man, must have its raison d'être. It is found among the ancient Americans, as prominently as among the archaic Âryans and Egyptians. The question will be fully dealt with in the second Part of this Volume; meanwhile a few facts may be given here. Says the author of the Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and the Quiches, 11,500 years ago:*
35 ←Seven seems to have been the sacred number par excellence among all civilized nations of antiquity. Why? This query has never been satisfactorily answered. Each separate people has given a different explanation, according to the peculiar tenets of their [exoteric] religion. That it was the number of numbers for those initiated to the sacred mysteries there can be no doubt. Pythagoras ... calls it the “Vehicle of life,” containing body and soul, since it is formed of a quaternary, that is: Wisdom and Intellect; and a Trinity, or action and matter. The Emperor Julian, in Matrem and in Oratio,† expresses himself thus: “Were I to touch upon the initiation into our secret mysteries, which the Chaldees bacchized respecting the seven-rayed god, lighting up the soul through him, I should say things unknown to the rabble, very unknown, but well known to the blessed Theurgists.”‡
And who that is acquainted with the Purânas, the Book of the Dead, the Zendavesta, the Assyrian Tiles, and finally the Bible, and has observed the constant occurrence of the number seven in these records of people from the remotest times upwards unconnected and so far apart, can regard as a coincidence the following fact, given by the same explorer of ancient Mysteries? Speaking of the prevalence of seven as a mystic number, among the inhabitants of the “Western Continent” of America, he adds that it is not less remarkable. For:
It frequently occurs in the Popul-Vuh. We find it besides in the seven families said by Sahagun and Clavigero to have accompanied the mystical personage named Votan, the reputed founder of the great city of Nachan, identified by some with Palenque. In the seven caves§ from which the ancestors of the Nahualts are re-
* The author of this work is Augustus Le Plongeon. He and his wife are well known in the United States for their untiring labours in Central America. It is they who discovered the sepulchre of the royal Kan Coh, at Cichen-Itza. The author seems to believe and to seek to prove that the Esoteric learning of the Âryans and the Egyptians was derived from the Mayas. But, although certainly coëval with Plato's Atlantis, the Mayas belonged to the Fifth Continent, which was preceded by Atlantis and Lemuria.
† More correctly In Matrem Deorum, Oratio v.
‡ P. 143.
§ These seven caves, seven cities, etc., etc., stand in every case for the seven centres, or zones, upon which the seven primitive groups of the first Root-Race were born.
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ported to have emerged. In the seven cities of Cibola, described by Coronado and Niza.... In the seven Antilles; in the seven heroes who, we are told, escaped the Deluge.
Heroes, moreover, whose number is found the same in every Deluge story—from the seven Rishis who were saved with Vaivasvata Manu, down to Noah's ark, into which beasts, fowls, and living creatures were taken by “sevens.” Thus we see the figures 1, 3, 5, 7, as perfect, because thoroughly mystic, numbers playing a prominent part in every Cosmogony and evolution of living Beings. In China, 1, 3, 5, 7, are called “celestial numbers” in the canonical “Book of Changes”—Yi King, or transformation, as in “evolution.”
The explanation of it becomes evident when one examines the ancient 36 ←Symbols: all these are based upon and start from the figures given from the Archaic Manuscript in the Proem of Volume I. , the symbol of evolution and fall into generation or Matter, is reflected in the old Mexican sculptures or paintings, as it is in the Kabalistic Sephiroth, and the Egyptian Tau. Examine the Mexican MS. (Add. MSS. Brit. Mus. 9789)*; you will find it in a tree whose trunk is covered with ten fruits ready to be plucked by a male and female, one on each side of it, while from the top of the trunk two branches shoot horizontally to the right and left, thus forming a perfect 
(Tau), the ends of the two branches, moreover, each bearing a triple bunch, with a bird—the bird of immortality, Âtmâ or the Divine Spirit—sitting between the two, and thus making the seventh. This represents the same idea as the Sephirothal Tree, ten in all, yet, when separated from its upper triad, leaving seven. These are the celestial fruits, the ten, or 
, 10, born out of the two invisible male and female seeds, making up the 12, or the Dodecahedron of the Universe. The mystic system contains the ·, the central point; the 3, or 
; the 5, 
; and the 7, or 
; or again 
; the triangle in the square and the synthesizing point in the interlaced double triangles. This for the world of the archetypes. The phenomenal world receives its culmination and the reflex of all in Man. Therefore he is the mystic square—in his metaphysical aspect—the Tetraktys; and becomes the Cube on the creative plane. His symbol is the cube unfolded† and 6 becoming 7, or the 
, 3 crossways (the female) and 4 vertically; and this is man, the culmination of the deity on earth, whose body is the cross of flesh, on, through, and in which he is ever crucifying and
* The engraving is reproduced in the Sacred Mysteries of the Mayas and the Quiches on p. 134.
† See Source of Measures, p. 50-53.
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putting to death the divine Logos, or his Higher Self. Says every Philosophy and Cosmogony:
The universe hath a Ruler [Rulers collectively] set over it, which is called the Word (Logos); the fabricating Spirit is its Queen: which two are the First Power after the One.
These are the Spirit and Nature, which two form our Illusory Universe. The two inseparables remain in the Universe of Ideas so long as it lasts, and then merge back into Parabrahman, the One ever changeless. “The Spirit, whose essence is eternal, one and self-existent,” emanates a pure ethereal Light—a dual light not perceptible to the elementary senses—according to the Purânas, the Bible, the Sepher Yetzirah, 37 ←the Greek and Latin Hymns, the Book of Hermes, the Chaldæan Book of Numbers, the Esotericism of Lao-tse, and everywhere else. In the Kabalah, which explains the secret meaning of Genesis, this Light is the Dual-Man, or the Androgyne (rather Sexless) Angels, whose generic name is Adam Kadmon. It is they who complete man, whose ethereal form is emanated by other divine, but far lower Beings, who solidify the body with clay, or the “dust of the ground”—an allegory indeed, but as scientific as any Darwinian evolution and more true.
The author of the Source of Measures says that the foundation of the Kabalah and of all its mystic books is made to rest upon the ten Sephiroth; which is a fundamental truth. He shows these Ten Sephiroth or the 10 Numbers as follows:
The circle is the naught; its vertical diameter line is the first or primal One [the Word or Logos], from which spring the 2, the 3, and so on to 9, the limit of the digits. The 10 is the first Divine Manifestation,* which contains every possible power of exact expression of proportion—the sacred Jod. By this Cabbalah we are taught that these Sephiroth were the numbers or emanations of the heavenly Light (20612 to 6561), they were the 10 Words, DBRIM, 41224, the light of which they were the flux was the Heavenly man, the Adam-KDM (the 144-144); and the Light, by the New Testament or Covenant (41224) created God; just as by the Old Testament God (Alhim, 31415) creates Light (20612 to 6561).†
* See Isis Unveiled, II. pp. 300 et seq., for a proof of the antiquity of the decimal system of figures.
† See Masonic Review, Cincinnati, June, 1886, Art. “The Cabbalah.—No. VI,” p. 10.
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Now there are three kinds of Light in Occultism, as in the Kabalah. (1) The Abstract and Absolute Light, which is Darkness; (2) The Light of the Manifested-Unmanifested, called by some the Logos: and (3) The latter Light reflected in the Dhyân Chohans, the minor Logoi—the Elohim, collectively—who, in their turn, shed it on the objective Universe. But in the Kabalah—reëdited and carefully adjusted to fit the Christian tenets by the Kabalists of the thirteenth century—the three Lights are described as: (1) The clear and penetrating, that of Jehovah; (2) reflected light; and (3) light in the abstract.
This Light, abstractly taken, (in a metaphysical or symbolical sense) is Alhim (Elohim, God), 38 ←while the clear penetrating Light is Jehovah. The light of Alhim belongs to the world in general, in its allness and general fulness, but the light of Jehovah is that pertaining to the chiefest production, man, whom this light penetrated to and made.*
The author of the Source of Measures pertinently refers the reader to Inman's Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names, ii. 648. There, an engraving of
The vesica piscis, Mary, and the female emblem, copied from a Rosary of the blessed Virgin Mary, which was printed at Venice, 1542,
and therefore, as Inman remarks, “with a licence from the Inquisition, and consequently orthodox,” will show the reader what the Latin Church understood by this “penetrating power of light and its effects.” How sadly disfigured—applied as they were to the grossest anthropomorphic conceptions—have, under Christian interpretation, become the noblest and grandest, as the most exalted, ideas of Deity of the Eastern Philosophy!
The Occultists in the East call this Light Daiviprakriti, and in the West the Light of Christos. It is the Light of the Logos, the direct reflection of the ever Unknowable on the plane of Universal Manifestation. But here is the interpretation thereof given by the modern Christians from the Kabalah. As declared by the author just cited:
To the fulness of the world in general with its chiefest content, man, the term Elohim-Jehovah applies. In extracts from Sohar, the Rev. Dr. Cassell [a Kabalist], to prove that the Cabbalah sets forth the doctrine of the Trinity, among other things says: “Jehovah is Elohim (Alhim)” ... By three steps God, (Alhim) and Jehovah become the same, and though separated, each and together they are of the same One.†
Similarly, Vishnu becomes the Sun, the visible symbol of the Im-
* Ibid., loc. cit.
† Ibid., p. 11.
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personal Deity. Vishnu is described as “striding through the seven regions of the Universe in three steps.” But with the Hindûs this is an exoteric account, a surface tenet and an allegory, while the Kabalists give it out as the Esoteric and final meaning. But to proceed:
Now Light, as shown, is 20612 to 6561, as the proper enunciation of the integral and numerical relation of diameter to circumference of a circle. God (Alhim, that is, 31415 to One, a modified form of the above) is the reduction of this, so as to obtain a standard unit One, as the basis, in general, of all calculation and all mensuration. But for the production of animal life, and for especial time measure, or the lunar year, that influence which causes conception and embryotic development, the numbers of the Jehovah measure (the “man even Jehovah” measure), viz., 113 to 355, have to be specialized.* But this last ratio is but a modified form of Light, or 20612 to 6561, as a pi value, being only a variation of the same (that is 20612 to 6561 is 31415 to one, and 355 to 113 is 31415 or Alhim or God), and in such a manner that one can be made 39 ←to flow into and be derived from the other:—and these are the three steps by which the Unity and sameness can be shown of the Divine names. That is, the two are but variations of the same ratio, viz., that of pi. The object of this comment is to show the same symbolic measuring use for the Cabbalah, as taught, with that of the Three Covenants of the Bible, and with that of Masonry as just noticed.
First, then, the Sephiroth are described as Light, that is, they themselves are a function of, indeed, the same as, the manifestation of the Ain Soph; and they are so from the fact that “Light” represents the ratio 20612 to 6561, as part of the “Words,” DBRIM, 41224, or, as to the Word, Dabar, 206 (= 10 cubits). “Light” is so much the burden of the Cabbalah as to explaining the Sephiroth, that the most famous book on the Cabbalah is called Sohar, or “Light.” In this we find expressions of this kind: “The infinite was entirely unknown and diffused no light before the luminous point violently broke through into vision.” “When He first assumed the form (of the crown, or the first Sephira), He caused 9 splendid lights to emanate from it, which, shining through it, diffused a bright light in all directions:”—that is, these 9 with his one (which was the origin, as above, of the 9), together, made the 10, that is , or 
, or the sacred Ten (numbers or Sephiroth), or Jod—and these numbers were “the Light.” Just as in the Gospel of St. John, God (Alhim, 31415 to one) was that Light (20612 to 6561) by which (Light) all things were made.†
In the Sepher Yetzirah, or “Number of Creation,” the whole process of evolution is given out in numbers. In its “thirty-two Paths of Wisdom” the number 3 is repeated four times, and the number 4 five times. Therefore, the Wisdom of God is contained in numbers (Sephrim or Sephiroth), for Sepher (or S-ph-r when unvowelled) means “to cipher.” And therefore, also, we find Plato stating that the Deity “geometrizes” in fabricating the Universe.
* See Source of Measures, pp. 276, et seq., App. VII.
† Art., Masonic Review, pp. 11, 12.
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The Kabalistic book, the Sepher Yetzirah, opens with a statement of the hidden wisdom of Alhim in Sephrim, i.e., the Elohim in the Sephiroth.
In thirty and two paths, hidden wisdom, established Jah, IHVH, Tzabaoth, Elohi of Israel, Alhim of Life, El of Grace and Mercy—exalted uplifted Dweller on high, and King of Everlasting, and His name—Holy! in Three Sephrim, viz.:
B—S'ph-r, V—S'ph-r, V—Siph-o-r.
Mr. Ralston Skinner goes on to say:
This comment sets forth the “hidden wisdom” of the original text by hidden wisdom, that is, by the use of words carrying a special set of numbers and a special phraseology, which will set forth the very explanatory system which we find to fit so accurately in the Hebrew Bible.... In setting forth his scheme, to enforce it, and to finish out his detailed exposition in a general postulate,—viz., the one word “Sephrim” (Sephiroth), 40 ←of the Number Jezirah, the author explains the separation of this word in the three subordinate ones, a play upon a common word, s-ph-r, or number.
The prince Al-Chazari* says to the Rabbi: “I wish now that thou wouldest impart to me some of the chiefest or leading principles of Natural Philosophy, which, as thou sayest, were in former times worked out by them (the ancient wise ones);”—to which the Rabbi makes answer: “To such principles appertains the Number of Creation of our race-father Abraham” that is Abram and Abraham, or numbers 41224 and 41252. He then says that this book of number treats of teaching the “Alhim-ness and One-ness through (DBRIM)” viz., the numbers of the word “Words.” That is, it teaches the use of the ratio 31415 to One, through 41224, which last, in the description of the Ark of the Covenant, was divided into two parts by the two tables of stone, on which these DBRIM, or 41224, were written or engraved—or 20612 × 2. He then comments on these three subordinately used words, and takes care as to one of them to make the comment, “and Alhim (31415 to One) said let there be Light (20612 to 6561).”
The words as given in the text are:
and the Rabbi, in commenting upon them, says: “It teaches the Alhim-ness (31415) and One-ness (the diameter to Alhim), through Words (DBRIM = 41224), by which on the one side there is infinite expression in heterogeneous creations, and on the other a final harmonic tendency to One-ness” (which, as everyone knows, is the mathematical function of pi of the schools, which measures, weighs, and numbers the stars of heaven, and yet resolves them back into the final oneness of the Uni-verse) “through Words. Their final accord perfects itself in that One-ness that ordains them, and which consists in
that is, the Rabbi, in his first comment, leaves the jod, or i, out of one of the words, whereas afterwards he restores it again. If we take the values of those subordinate
* In the Book Al-Chazari, by Jehuda-ha-Levi, translated by Dr. D. Cassel.
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words, we find them to be 340, 340 and 346;—together these are 1026, and the division of the general word into these has been to produce these numbers—which by T'mura may be changed in various ways, for various purposes.*
The reader is asked to turn to Stanza IV of Volume I, Shloka 3 and Commentary,† to find that the 3, 4, (7), and the thrice seven, or 1065, the number of Jehovah, is the number of the 21 Prajâpati mentioned in the Mahâbhârata, or the three Sephrim (words in ciphers or figures). And this comparison between the Creative Powers of Archaic Philosophy and the anthropomorphic Creator of exoteric Judaism (since the Esotericism of the Jews shows its identity with the Secret Doctrine) will lead the student to perceive and discover that, in truth, Jehovah is but a “lunar” and 41 ←“generation” God. It is a fact well known to every conscientious student of the Kabalah, that the deeper he dives into it, the more he feels convinced that unless the Kabalah—or what is left of it—is read by the light of the Eastern Esoteric Philosophy, its study leads only to the discovery that, on the lines traced by exoteric Judaism and Christianity, the monotheism of both is nothing more exalted than ancient Astrolatry, now vindicated by modern Astronomy. The Kabalists never cease to repeat that Primal Intelligence can never be understood. It cannot be comprehended, nor can it be located, therefore it has to remain nameless and negative. Hence the Ain Suph—the “Unknowable” and “Unnameable”—as It could not be made manifest, was imagined as emanating Manifesting Powers. It is then with its Emanations alone that human intellect has to, and can, deal. Christian theology, having rejected the doctrine of Emanations and replaced them with direct, conscious Creations of Angels and the rest out of nothing, now finds itself hopelessly stranded between Supernaturalism, or Miracle, and Materialism. An extra-cosmic God is fatal to Philosophy: an intra-cosmic Deity—i.e., Spirit and Matter inseparable from each other—is a philosophical necessity. Separate them and that which is left is a gross superstition under a mask of emotionalism. But why “geometrize,” as Plato has it, why represent these Emanations under the form of an immense arithmetical table? The question is well answered by the author just cited, who says:
Mental perception, to become physical perception, must have the cosmic principle of Light:—and, by this, our mental circle must become visible through light; or, for its complete manifestation, the circle must be that of physical visibility, or Light itself.
* Art. cited, pp. 12, 13.
† i. pp. 117 et seq.
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Such conceptions, thus formulated, became the ground-work of the philosophy of the Divine manifesting in the universe.*
This is Philosophy. It is otherwise when we find the Rabbi in Al-Chazari saying that:
Under s'ph-r is to be understood—calculation and weighing of the created bodies. For the calculation, by means of which a body must be constructed in harmony or symmetry, by which it must be in construction rightly arranged and made to correspond to the object in design, consists at last in number, extension, mass, weight;—co-ordinate relation of movements, then harmony of music, must consist altogether by number, that is s'ph-r.... By Sippor (s'phor) is to be understood the words of Alhim (206—1 of 31415 to one), whereunto joins or adapts itself the design to the frame or form of construction; for example—it was said “Let Light be.” The work became as the words were spoken, that is, as the numbers of the work came forth.†
This is materializing the spiritual without scruple. But the Kabalah 42 ←was not always so well adapted to anthropo-monotheistic conceptions. Compare this with any of the six schools of India. For instance in Kapila's Sânkhya Philosophy, unless, allegorically speaking, Purusha mounts on the shoulders of Prakriti, the latter remains irrational, while the former remains inactive without her. Therefore Nature (in man) must become a compound of Spirit and Matter before he becomes what he is; and the Spirit latent in Matter must be awakened to life and consciousness gradually. The Monad has to pass through its mineral, vegetable and animal forms, before the Light of the Logos is awakened in the animal man. Therefore, till then, the latter cannot be referred to as “man,” but has to be regarded as a Monad imprisoned in ever-changing forms. Evolution, not Creation, by means of Words is recognized in the Philosophies of the East, even in their exoteric records. Ex oriente lux. Even the name of the first man in the Mosaic Bible had its origin in India, Professor Max Müller's negation notwithstanding. The Jews got their Adam from Chaldæa; and Adam-Adami is a compound word and therefore a manifold symbol, and proves the Occult dogmas.
This is no place for philological disquisitions. But the reader may be reminded that the words Ad and Adi mean in Sanskrit the “first”; in Aramæan, “one” (Ad-ad, the “only one”); in Assyrian, “Father,” whence Ak-ad or “father-creator.”‡ And once the statement is found
* Art. cited, p. 2.
† Ibid., p. 14.
‡ The appellation Ak-ad (or Akkadians) is of the same class as Ad-m, Ha-va (Eve) Æd-en (Eden); Ak-Ad meaning “Son of Ad,” like the sons of Ad in Ancient Arabia. Ad-ad, the “only one” and the “first,” was the Ad-on or “Lord” of Syria and consort of Ad-ar-gat or Aster't, the Syrian Goddess. And Gan-Æden (Eden) or Gandunia was Babylonia and Mesopotamia. In Assyrian Ak meant Creator, the letter k being pronounced kh (ah) gutturally. According to Swedenborg's mysticism Adam was not a man but a church (?) of primitive light. In the Vedas, Ad-iti is the primitive light, the Âkâsha of the phenomenal world.
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correct, it becomes rather difficult to confine Adam to the Mosaic Bible alone, and to see therein simply a Jewish name.
There is frequent confusion in the attributes and genealogies of the Gods in their Theogonies, the Alpha and the Omega of the records of that symbolical science, as given to the world by the half-initiated writers, Brâhmanical and Biblical. Yet there could be no such confusion made by the earliest nations, the descendants and pupils of the Divine Instructors; for both the attributes and the genealogies were inseparably linked with cosmogonical symbols, the “Gods” being the life and animating “soul-principle” of the various regions of the Universe. Nowhere and by no people was speculation allowed to range beyond those manifested Gods. The boundless and infinite Unity remained with every nation a virgin forbidden soil, untrodden by man's thought, 43 ←untouched by fruitless speculation. The only reference made to it was the brief conception of its diastolic and systolic property, of its periodical expansion, or dilatation, and contraction. In the Universe, with all its incalculable myriads of Systems and Worlds disappearing and reäppearing in eternity, the anthropomorphized Powers, or Gods, their Souls, had to disappear from view with their Bodies. As our Catechism says:
“The Breath returning to the Eternal Bosom which exhales and inhales them.”
Ideal Nature, the Abstract Space in which everything in the Universe is mysteriously and invisibly generated, is the same female side of the procreative power in Nature in the Vedic as in every other Cosmogony. Aditi is Sephira, and the Sophia of the Gnostics, and Isis, the Virgin Mother of Horus. In every Cosmogony, behind and higher than the “Creative” Deity, there is a Superior Deity, a Planner, an Architect, of whom the Creator is but the executive agent. And still higher, over and around, within and without, there is the Unknowable and the Unknown, the Source and Cause of all these Emanations.
It thus becomes easy to account for the reason why Adam-Adami is found in the Chaldæan scripture, certainly earlier than the Mosaic Books. In Assyrian Ad is the “father,” and in Aramæan Ad is “one,” and Ad-ad the “only one,” while Ak is in Assyrian “creator.” Thus
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Ad-am-ak-ad-mon became Adam-Kadmon in the Kabalah (Zohar), meaning as it did, the “One (Son) of the divine Father, or the Creator,” for the words am and om meant at one time in nearly every language the divine, or the deity. Thus Adam-Kadmon and Adam-Adami came to mean “The first Emanation of the Father-Mother or Divine Nature,” and literally the “first Divine One.” And it is easy to see that Ad-Argat (or Aster't, the Syrian Goddess, the consort of Ad-on, the Lord God of Syria or the Jewish Adonai), and Venus, Isis, Ister, Mylitta, Eve, etc., are identical with the Aditi and Vâch of the Hindûs. They are all the “Mothers of all living” and “of the Gods.” On the other hand—cosmically and astronomically—all the male Gods became at first “Sun-Gods,” then, theologically, the “Suns of Righteousness,” and the Logoi, all symbolized by the Sun.* They are all Protogonoi—First-born—and 44 ←Mikroprosopoi. With the Jews Adam-Kadmon was the same as Athamaz, Tamaz, or the Adonis of the Greeks—“the One with, and of his Father”—the “Father” becoming during the later Races Helios, the Sun, as Apollo Karneios,† for instance, who was the “Sun-born”; Osiris, Ormazd, and so on, were all followed by, and found themselves transformed later on into, still more earthly types: such as Prometheus, the crucified of Mount Kajbee, Hercules, and so many others, Sun-Gods and Heroes, until all of them came to have no better significance than phallic symbols.
In the Zohar it is said:
Man was created by the Sephiroth (Elohim-Javeh, also) and they engendered by common power the earthly Adam.
Therefore in Genesis the Elohim say: “Behold Man is become as one of us.” But in Hindû Cosmogony or “Creation,” Brahmâ-Prajâpati creates Virâj and the Rishis, spiritually; therefore the latter are dis-
* Adam-Jehovah, Brahmâ and Mars are, in one sense, identical; they are all symbols for primitive or initial generative powers for the purposes of human procreation. Adam is red, and so also are Brahmâ-Virâj and Mars—God and Planet. Water is the “blood” of the Earth; therefore, all these names are connected with Earth and Water. “It takes earth and water to create a human soul,” says Moses. Mars is identical with Kârttikeya, God of War (in one sense)—which God is born of the Sweat of Shiva, Shiva-gharmaja and the Earth. In the Mahâbhârata he is shown as born without the intervention of a woman. And he is also called Lohita, the Red, like Adam, and the other “first men.” Hence, the author of The Source of Measures is quite right in thinking that Mars (and all the other Gods of like attributes), “being the god of war and of bloodshed, was but a secondary idea flowing out of the primary one of shedding of blood in conception for the first time.” Hence Jehovah became later a fighting God, “Lord of Hosts,” and one who commands war. He is the aggressive Zodh—or Cain, by permutation, who slew his (female) brother, whose “blood crieth from the ground,” the Earth having opened her mouth to receive the blood. (Genesis iii.)
† Apollo Karneios is certainly a Greek transformation from the Hindû Krishna-Karna. Karna means radiant, and Karneios, which was a title of Apollo with the Celts as with the Greeks, meant “Sun-born.”
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tinctly called the “Mind-born Sons of Brahmâ”; and this specified mode of engendering precluded every idea of Phallicism, at any rate in the earlier human nations. This instance well illustrates the respective spirituality of the two nations.